The Blog

BioTalk20: GMO Babies and the 2016 Election

The latest episode of BioTalk is with Dr. David Prentice of the Lozier Insititute on the world’s first GMO baby born this summer using the “3-parent IVF” method called “maternal spindle transfer”.

If not for the Aderholt amendment to the 2015 omnibus spending bill, which prohibits the Food and Drug Administration from entertaining any submission that proposes “research in which a human embryo is intentionally created or modified to include heritable genetic modification”, that baby would have likely been manufactured in the United States.

Preventing mitochondrial disease is a good and noble goal, but this is not the way to go about doing it. Allowing germ-line modification for mitochondrial replacement to proceed sets a dangerous precedent and may only be the beginning.

3-parent IVF is already being used in the Ukraine, not to treat mitochondrial disease, but general fertility treatment.

Let’s keep human genetic experimentation out of our country!

The presidential election is obviously important, but even if you’re one of the many people this time around who find yourself in the unfortunate position of feeling like you can’t vote for either major party presidential candidate, go to the polls and help elect good people to your state legislatures, Congress and other local positions. In many ways your votes there are even more important than your vote for president — in terms of actually having an impact on legislation.